


How Deep That Bullet Lies

by Josies



Series: No Saints Without Sinners [10]
Category: Saints Row
Genre: Drama, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Lovers To Enemies, Mentioned Boss/Dex, Mentioned Boss/Johnny, One Shot, Pining, Saints Row 2 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-30 01:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16755331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josies/pseuds/Josies
Summary: "I'm gonna kill Dex.""Look, we don't know it was—""Who the fuck else would it be?"





	How Deep That Bullet Lies

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I'm finally back after moving houses and just having a fuckton of stuff to deal with. Thanks for the comments and kudos you've left me while I've been gone, I really appreciate the feedback! I should have more time to work on the next chapters for Reunions and Rule #2 now!
> 
> This fic takes place right after the secret mission in SR2 with Julius and Dex. If you haven't played it, you can do that by going to the Stilwater PD headquarters and listening to some audio files on the 2nd (or 3rd) floor. Listening to all of them triggers the mission.
> 
> This is sort of the first fic in a series of what happens between my Boss and Dex and how their relationship plays out after he betrays her. I love Saints Row so much and I barely have any bad things to say about it, but Dex was one of my favorite characters in the first game and I don't agree at all with how the devs turned him into an antagonist in SR2 and then never even gave us closure, aside from a spin-off game they never released and a husk wearing a purple visor in GOoH. I need there to be a reason for the things he does in SR2, so I'm just gonna come up with one my damn self. Also, I didn't bother being too medically accurate. I like things realistic, but Saints Row is so far from that. :')

 

* * *

  **March 2009**

* * *

 

_"Yo."_

"Mind pickin' me up?"

_"Now? Where you at?"_

"At the Amphitheatre."

_"What's going on?"_

"Just the usual. I got shot and there's a body. The cops'll be here soon."

_"Hold on—what the fuck happened?"_

"Just hurry, Johnny. And come alone."

_"On my way."_

Doris listens to the beeping tone of the call ending until it stops and she lets her hand fall down to her lap. Her head throbs, the wound on her leg burns, and her mouth's dry. She tries to swallow, but her tongue sticks to her palate. She knows she should move. She stares at Julius' lifeless body leaning against a pillar. His head's in an odd position. His eyes are still partly open. She closes her own. Blood pools up slowly on the cold stone step she sits on. She's taking a big risk staying there, but she's bled too much, and she prefers not passing out while driving, and she doesn't want to leave yet, anyway. She wants to stay a while longer for Julius — not to pay her respects, nothing like that at all, but to silently mock and ridicule him for failing with his master plan, for losing, for being lesser than her. She smiles and chuckles to herself, and then she laughs, which ends in coughs and a sigh and quiet words of victory leaving her mouth, _played you, bitch_ , as she pulls a hood over her head and leans back to keep her head from spinning too hard.

"Boss!"

Johnny's voice pulls her out of whatever semi-conscious state she slipped into. She turns around to look at him, placing her hand on the stone for support, only to have her palm covered in blood. She frowns and tries to wipe it on her stockings. Besides Johnny, it's quiet. She's surprised no one else has turned up by now. She figured their attackers were told to stop pursuing because the cops were on their way. It's beginning to seem like they left for another reason.

"The hell took you so long?" She asks to catch his attention. She has absolutely no clue of how long he took, but it's just their way of talking to each other. Rude and bitchy.

He's about to snap at her when he notices Julius and he stops in his tracks in the middle of his way down the stairs. The man looks much older, with some wrinkles on his face and grey in his beard, not to mention he's unmistakably dead, but it's definitely Julius. There's nothing Johnny can do for him, but Doris is sitting in a pool of her own blood, so he rushes down the rest of the stairs to kneel next to her. He pulls his jacket out of the way and rips the hem of his shirt apart to tie the strip of fabric around her thigh, firmly over the wound. He doesn't notice her chuckling at what he does. He didn't have to rip his shirt apart — he could have just removed it to wrap the whole thing around her leg. But that's Johnny. He rarely thinks before he acts.

"You're so fuckin' dumb," she says into the big scarf wrapped around her neck.

"What?"

"Nothin'."

"Put more pressure on it," he says as he moves her hand over the wound and presses it down with his own. Then he checks the back of her thigh for an exit wound. "The bullet's still in?"

She grunts over the pain, suddenly very alert and aware of the fact that there's an actual bullet lodged between her muscles, that the blood on her hands is warm and real. "Yeah, didn't get in too far. Didn't shatter."

"Can you get it out yourself?"

"I don't know, man," she says, chuckling over the fact that there's fucking nothing funny about the situation. "You might have to pull it out."

He looks up at her face. It's bruised, like she got the end of a rifle slammed to her face more than once. Her nose has stopped bleeding, but her cheek is swollen, and her brow's split. She's drowsy from the blood loss, and he doubts she's able to walk herself. "You're in bad shape," he says, catching her attention. "We gotta get you to the hospital."

"I can't go to the hospital," she says. "Don't know if the cops are lookin' for me."

"But—"

"You saw a black Eiswolf parked up there?"

"I guess, yeah?"

"Have someone pick it up. I want that car."

"Doe, what the fuck happened here?" He asks again, searching for her eyes. She's paling. It's not good. But he needs to know, needs to hear it from her.

She stares at Julius' lifeless body again, memorizing every small, disturbing detail. She's been in a far too similar situation before, years ago, but this time she's not a victim, and she won't be left traumatized. This time she learns from her mistakes. This time she wins.

She flicks her gaze to Johnny, meeting his eyes, and her voice is cold and composed and nothing like he's ever heard before. "Revenge."

 

* * *

 

It's not the first time she bleeds on his car seat, not the first time her blood stains his clothes. Probably won't be the last time, either. Johnny tries to call a few numbers as he crosses the speed limit. Anyone with even a little medical knowledge would do, but nobody ever answers on Sundays. Sundays are for family dinners and sports games and dates and cooking meth, not for getting shot, or helping out people who got shot. He takes the highway road to Barrio, hoping for someone to be at the apartment where the Morenos reside. It's dark, empty. _Fuck._

"Why's no one ever around when they're needed?" He grumbles as he sets Doris down onto a seat in the hallway, pulls her shoes off and drops her jacket to the floor to accompany his. He opens the drawers of a big dresser next to them one by one, rummaging through them. "You got a flashlight somewhere?"

"Felipe took Chico racin' with him," she says, even drowsier than before, sounding like she's talking more to herself than him. She wishes her dog was there to comfort her. "He loves to try and outrun the cars. It makes him so happy."

Johnny finds a flashlight from a closet full of cleaning supplies and an impressive collection of machetes. "You okay?" He asks, frowning a little, as he picks her up again and carries her to the bathroom.

"Oh yeah, aside from havin' a bullet in my flesh, I'm fuckin' great," she replies, staining his neck and shirt with the blood on her hands as she holds onto him weakly.

He would chuckle at her imitation of some of the first words he spoke to her at the courthouse a few months back, but he's not in the mood at all for that, now. He lowers her down to stand on the bathroom floor, kneeling down himself and helping her maintain her balance, while he removes the cloth around her thigh, pushes her skirt up, and pulls her stockings out of the way.

"Johnny, now's not really the time for that," she mutters, weak and flirty, as he guides her to sit down on the edge of the bathtub behind her.

He gives her a look, but she's too dizzy to make anything out of it. "You good there?" He asks, making sure before he lets go of her.

"Yeah, real comfy," she replies, clutching onto the edge of the tub. "Open the last cabinet and take out the box on the second highest shelf. There should be bandages, needles, pliers, antiseptic—"

"Got nothin' to sterilize the wound with here."

"Oh, fuck me runnin'. You sure?"

"Yep."

"I fuckin' told him to buy more," she says, sighing at the absent-minded mess her brother's proved himself to be yet again. "Get vodka and tequila from the kitchen."

"Why both?"

"Vodka for the wound and tequila for me. I ain't gonna be sober for this."

Johnny agrees it's better for her to chug down a good portion of alcohol before he starts poking around in her wound. She swears in Spanish under her breath and grabs his shoulder for support when he pours the clear liquid over the wound. She wants to scream, but she refuses to show that much vulnerability, even to him. He holds the flashlight between his teeth for better lighting as he wipes blood off her skin. He's done this to himself a dozen times, but digging into someone else's flesh with pliers is a new experience. Her thighs are thick and the bullet's gone deeper than she thought. The sound that comes from Johnny sliding the pliers down deeper in the otherwise quiet bathroom is repulsing.

"I'm gonna fuckin' puke," she says, staring up at the ceiling, then suddenly trying to jerk her whole body away from him when he accidentally loses his hold on the bullet. "Shit—Jesus!"

"Don't move," he says, annoyed. "Keep your muscles relaxed."

"Why didn't we do this on the kitchen table?"

"Easier to clean here."

"Would be easier to fuckin' lie down."

He ignores her, pushing his glasses up and squinting his eyes at the wound. Her blood turns the bullet into a slippery son-of-a-bitch. He's so used to deliberately hurting people that doing his best to cause her as little pain and discomfort as possible is difficult. Her nails digging into his shoulder through his shirt in turn proves it.

"Almost got it," he says, his voice muffled by the flashlight.

"Motherfucker!" She hisses through her teeth as he pulls the bullet out. She squeezes her eyes shut for a few seconds, drawing deep breaths. The sweat dripping down her forehead mixes up with the tears rolling down her cheeks. She fumbles for her bottle of tequila on the floor. The pain almost had her pass out.

"You wanna tell me how you ended up puttin' a bullet in Julius' head on a Sunday night?" He asks to give her something else to think about. She's clearly doing her best to hide the pain she's in and he gives her a moment to pull herself back together. He hands her the bottle, even removes the cap for her.

"It's a funny story, really," she says, pausing for a throat-burning shot, "but I dunno if I should tell you."

He looks up at her, frowning, holding up the bullet between the pliers. "Did this come from his gun?"

"No."

"Then spill it."

_"Pues, yo no estoy—"_

"Doe."

She sighs, takes another shot, tries to clear her mind enough for a short explanation. Something she should have told Johnny about right when it happened. "Someone sent me tapes of tapped conversations before and after Hughes' fundraiser," she says. "Troy's in all of those tapes. He had nothin' to do with it. It was all Julius. That old-ass bitch even admitted it before I shot him."

"Are you for fuckin' real?" His voice raises toward the last words and she raises her eyebrows a little in turn. "Who sent 'em to you? When'd you get 'em?"

"A few weeks ago."

"And you're tellin' me now?"

"Yeah."

"Why you gotta be like this?" He asks, using a little too much force while stitching her up, making her wince and whimper quietly in pain. "You expect everyone else in the crew to be honest but yourself. You know damn well that's some grade A bullshit."

"Dex sent me the tapes," she says, half to see the look on his face, and half to make him shut up about her hypocrisy.

"What?"

"I talked with him yesterday and he asked me to meet him today. At the church."

"You didn't go, right?"

"Does it look like I didn't?"

"Are you fuckin' kidding me? You went to see him without me? For real?" He keeps asking the same question in different ways because he can't believe how stupid she's been.

"He gave me Julius, okay?"

"And how the hell did you end up gettin' shot, then?"

"Well, he was never there," she mumbles, thinking that if her words are unclear enough, she won't have to put up with the inevitable fit Johnny's about to throw.

He glances up at her while finishing the stitching work. "What do ya mean he wasn't there?"

"It was kinda like—"

"Like what?" He asks impatiently. She's stalling, meaning she's about to say something he doesn't want to hear.

"An ambush. Kinda."

Johnny's shoulders tense up. He was right — that's exactly what he didn't want to hear. He drops the scissors he's holding and he stands up, turning his back to her.

"I mean, it was just me and Julius there, and then, uh, these dudes in orange attacked us. They had a fuckin' chopper shootin' rockets at us, like, talk about overkill," she says, rambling in an attempt to distract Johnny from the rage fuming inside him. "I dunno what Ultor did to the church while renovatin' it, but it held up pretty well. We should take it back."

"I'm gonna fuckin' kill him!" He yells as he storms to the sink and starts angry-washing her blood off his hands.

She sighs deep. _"Ay, por favor—"_

"Where's your fuckin' phone?" He asks, drying off his hands and throwing the towel onto the sink counter.

"You know I'm about to pass out, right?"

He turns around at the door, glaring at her. "Why the fuck didn't you tell me?!"

"Oh, and what was I supposed to say? 'Yo, Johnny, wanna come meet up my ex with me?'"

"I woulda stopped you from going!"

She gives him a look with an eyebrow slightly raised. "We both know that's an unlikely scenario."

"Why'd you even wanna meet that corporate dick?"

"That's my business," she answers, not in the mood to start explaining herself to him.

"You know what? Fix your own fuckin' leg," he snaps as he turns around again to walk out of the bathroom.

"If I let go of the bathtub, I'm gonna fall."

"Like I care!"

"Johnny," she says as she stares down at her bloody legs, tired and hurt and craving for more of the simple human contact he just gave her. " _No te vayas. Necesita tu ayuda._ " She's not used to asking for help, never planned on getting used to it. Doing it in a language he doesn't speak feels easier.

He stands in the hallway, staring at his jacket down at his feet, scowling. He might not speak the language, but he knows what she's asking for. Her voice sounds weak, and she never lets people hear that, she never gives them an opportunity to exploit it. He rams his fist into a wall. It doesn't really help.

"I'm gonna kill Dex," he says with his jaw set as he walks back into the bathroom and kneels in front of her to finish fixing up her leg.

She wants to give his shoulder a squeeze for coming back, or press her shin to his for a second, or something—anything. She doesn't. She just licks her dry lips before speaking. "Look, we don't know it was—"

"Who the fuck else would it be?" He snaps at her again. He cleans her thigh with a damp towel, pours a little more vodka over the stitches and covers them with a dressing. "They tried to kill Julius, too, right?"

"Well, yeah, but I'm not gonna just blindly trust what Julius said."

"What did he say?"

"That Dex planned it."

"Yeah, I'm trustin' Julius on this one."

"But what's his motivation?" She asks, wanting to add a 'why would he do that?,' but it sounds too desperate.

"Who the fuck cares?" He wraps a long gauze around her thigh to secure the stitches, since he knows she'll move around like an idiot as soon as he turns his back. "Dude probably just finally flipped his shit. He always had a stick up his ass."

"I need more proof than that."

"Seems pretty fuckin' obvious to me already."

She looks away, bites her teeth together. She doesn't want it to be obvious. She doesn't want Johnny to be right.

"Doe, he fucked you over," he says, angry in her place, as she acts inexplicably calm. "Why aren't you mad?"

"God, I need coke right about now," she says, ignoring his question on purpose, because her eyes burn and she's not about to start crying in front of him. She doesn't want to cry at all.

He stares at her for a short moment before he straightens up again. It's probably the blood loss that has her so docile. It has to be. He won't let it be anything else, because she's smarter than that, smarter than letting some old, dead feelings and sentimentality get in the way of what's good for her. "You need antibiotics and painkillers," he says.

"Johnny, there's no infection—"

"You went without tellin' me. I'm gonna pump you full of meds and it ain't up for debate." He moves to put the box away, quietly grunting at the sharp pain shooting through his bad knee. "What have you got here?"

She shrugs. "I dunno. Check the cabinets."

"There's aspirin."

"How fuckin' useless," she says, showing some level of annoyance for the first time that night. "Why do we even have that?"

"This expired seven years ago," he says as he holds up the bottle.

_"Ah, vale."_

He throws the bottle into a trashcan next to the sink and goes back to rummaging the cabinets, only to realize there's nothing of use for them. "Come on," he says as he helps her up and out of the bathroom. "I'll go get meds for you. You stay here. I'll try to reach Felipe."

"You know he never answers," she says, holding onto him with shaky hands and slowly limping to the couch. Her hands linger on him for a little too long even after she's already seated.

"I won't take long," he says, stuffing pillows behind her back. He pulls a blanket over her legs, gives her one more concerned look and makes his way to pick up their jackets off the floor. "Don't move off that couch, but try not to fall asleep 'til I'm back."

"Johnny, I didn't lose _that_ much blood."  
  
He points a finger at her as he walks back to the living room. "I _will_ take you to the hospital if you don't stop arguin', don't fuckin' try me," he says, setting her phone down to the coffee table. Then he walks off again.

She sighs as she settles under the blanket. "You're overreactin' big time."

"Just don't move, okay?" He asks in a serious tone from the hallway as he pulls his shoes on. "Call me if you start feelin' worse."

Doris doesn't give him any further arguments and he shuts the door behind him. The silence that follows eats away at her. Even the throbbing pain doesn't keep her mind clear for long. She knows she should have, at the very least, called Dex by now. She should have called him, sneered insults at him, threatened him. She should have told him that she'll find him and tear him apart limb from limb with her own bare hands; that she'll carve his heart out and set his mutilated body on fire and send his soul down to Hell with the promise of eternal torture once her own time comes; that under no circumstances will she ever forgive him for what he did to her tonight.

She stares at her phone on the coffee table. She realizes there's a possibility Johnny took Dex's number and is on his way to kill him now. Then again, he has been showing a lot of concern for her well-being ever since they were reunited, so maybe he wouldn't leave her on her own for revenge's sake. She'd rather have Johnny holding her again than whatever pills he'll bring her, and she'd scold herself for thinking that, but she's in way too much pain, both physical and emotional, to do so. She's done her best to forget whatever it was she felt for Johnny before, but seeing him nearly every day isn't exactly helping. It's hard to keep it in when his hands touch her skin, even if it happened because he had to remove a bullet from her leg.

She's spent weeks watching Johnny build his relationship stronger with Aisha. They live together. They fight less than they used to. They haven't gone on a break even once. It's childish and selfish of her to feel jealous when she fully well knows she should feel happy for her best friend, but every time he mentions Aisha, she feels lonely. She feels lonely to the point she agreed to meet Dex when he called her and she went to see him by herself, without telling anyone, because she had to hear what he wanted to say to her, as she felt like him giving her Julius might have been his way of apologizing, of showing interest in working with her, anything that had the tiniest possibility of making her feel less lonely.

After they got the crew back together, she didn't have time to think about Dex; how he was, whether she wanted to see him or not, what she would say to him, what could still happen between them. With the way things ended with him, there were just too many issues to figure out first, and she simply didn't have the time to spare. She missed him, she missed him a lot, but she figured he would hear about her being alive sooner or later, and if he wanted to have anything to do with her, he would reach out to her.

He reached out, all right. She wants to forget about how her heart skipped a beat when she heard his voice on the phone. How many hours she spent trying to figure out what she wanted to say to him. How she went through every possible scenario in her head of how exactly meeting him would go — except for the true outcome, of course, as she never could have seen that coming from him, which she'll never forgive herself — and how all of them somehow ended up with her being honest for once and telling him how much she misses him. How her heart skipped a second, much more painful beat when the realization set in that he only called her to the church to have her killed, that both her and Julius were targets. How Dex didn't care to talk with her, or even see her. How she went from being his girlfriend to a name on a hit list, and how she can't even begin to wrap her head around of how the hell that happened. And, lastly, how stupid it was of her to expect he'd be happy about her being alive.

She curses herself out loud as she rolls off the couch and limps her way to the kitchen. There's only one thing going through her mind on a tormenting loop, _he wants me dead_ , as she washes down sedatives with room temperature vodka on the kitchen floor, tears burning her eyes even harder than the alcohol pouring down her throat and into her empty stomach.

 

* * *

 

Doris wakes to the discomfort of a dry mouth and a burning leg and something licking her hand. She groans and opens her eyes, only to see Johnny's chin hovering over her. Her dog lets out a happy bark next to the couch, leaving her hand all sloppy, as he moves closer to try and lick her face.

Johnny looks down at her, then over his shoulder. "Yo, she's up!"

She tries to push herself up to sit, but he's quick to place his hand on her shoulder, keeping her down, and earning a groggy glare. He's wearing Felipe's shirt, now, but there's still a small stain of blood on his neck, under his ear.

"Don't try to get up," Felipe says as he rushes to the living room, kneeling down next to the couch after shooing the dog out of the way. He takes her face into his hands with his brow furrowed. "Are you okay? What happened? Who shot you? Do you need anythin'?"

She tries to wriggle away from him. It's useless. "I ain't a kid who got a boo-boo. Stop doing that."

"Shut up and tell me what you need," he says, pursing his lips at her the same way she always does, "or I'll tell Mom you got shot."

"I can't talk with my mouth shut, _pendejo_."

"I ain't even kiddin', I got her on speed dial."

"Fine. Get me a drink."

He presses a kiss to her forehead before getting up. "I'll get you a nice, big glass of cold, refreshin' water."

She throws a pillow at him, missing by several feet. The pillow hits a stack of CD's, knocking them off a table, and judging by all the noise, Chico jumps after them to make an even bigger mess. "That's not what I meant and you know it!" She snaps after Felipe.

"Juice, then!"

" _Ay, Dios mío_... Johnny, tell him."

"Get her mango juice," Johnny says.

Doris smacks his chest with her fist. "I hate you two."

"Aw, you break our hearts," he says as he turns the TV louder as a sign of not really giving a damn. He didn't get any sleep and he gets cranky when he skips the few hours of rest his body requires. He spent several hours talking Felipe out of freaking out too bad while Doris was knocked out cold.

She frowns at him and crosses her arms over her chest. "You're a shitty pillow."

"Yo, that ain't my problem."

"Bitch."

He ignores her, moving his numb leg into a better position under her and the pillows between them. He has other things on his mind. "Ya know, I've been thinkin' about Julius, and—"

"Don't," she says quietly, interrupting him.

He blinks and looks down at her. She nods toward the kitchen and she shakes her head a little to get her point across. She's not ready to tell her brother. Felipe's been worrying after her since she told him she's bringing the Saints back. He never wanted her to join a street gang to begin with and he's going to get an aneurysm hearing the said gang's former leader tried to have her killed, not to mention her ex-boyfriend tried to do the exact same thing just last night. She doesn't have the energy to go through that. The fit Johnny threw already was enough.

"Who asked you to stare at me sleepin' all night long?" She asks, mostly to keep her brother from paying attention to the short, suspicious silence that took over the living room.

"The last time you bled all over me you nearly died," he says as he turns his attention back to the television. "I ain't takin' any chances."

She stares up at his chin. She's too tired and emotionally beaten to smile, but the feeling's there. He's talking about the time she popped up behind his door after revenge-killing William Sharp; weak and freezing and bleeding to death. She trusted him to get her to a hospital, to save her ass, and he didn't fail her. After that, she's never questioned his loyalty, even if it's still a little unclear to her how they ended up becoming best friends, aside from the obvious facts. "Careful, or you might lose your cold, sociopathic reputation," she says, managing to add a teasing tone to her voice.

"It's just way too inconvenient for you to die now."

"Yeah, keep tellin' yourself that."

"Shut up, Doe. I'm watchin' this."

"It's in Spanish."

"So?"

"So, unless you actually did somethin' useful with your time in jail, like taught yourself a new language, you don't understand a fuckin' thing, my guy."

"Oh yeah? If you're so fuckin' intelligent, you might as well translate instead of runnin' yo mouth."

"Just turn the fuckin' subtitles on, idiot."

Felipe comes back with a glass of juice and a bottle of painkillers, smiling a little at their childish bickering. After handing them over to Doris, he lifts her legs up, drops down to the couch and places her legs over his lap. Chico follows him, despite of Doris trying to stop him, _there's no room for you here_ , settling between her and the backrest of the couch, happily licking her cheek before laying his head down on her chest, no doubt sensing his owner is in desperate need of comforting.

She pets his head until the pills kick in and the pain fades away, clearing her mind from anxious thoughts as she falls into a mellow half-slumber, barely listening to Johnny and Felipe chat and argue over cars and games and whatever is on the channel they watch. The company of the most important men in her life, and the blunt her brother rolls for her later, keep her from thinking about the distressing mess Dex pulled her into. Eventually, she's going to have to face it all — how to come into terms with what he did to her, the decision of what to do with him and her own feelings regarding that, and how to convince Johnny not to go after him the second he walks out of the door later. On top of everything else going on, there's a whole new shitshow demanding her time and attention and energy. Just... not now.

 

* * *

 


End file.
